Article Archive for August 2009

Although strictly speaking this has little to do with international law, readers with an oenological leaning might be interested to hear that legendary wine auctioneer and critic, Michael Broadbent of Christies and Decanter, has decided to file a law suit in London against the publisher Random House for comments made in “The Billionaire’s Vinegar” by Benjamin Wallace.
In his book, from 2006, Wallace portrays one of …

30/08/2009 – 5:44 pm
| Comments Off on ILO to Set up Legal Instruments on Domestic Workers

One of the most striking problems for the enforcement of labour standards in developing countries is the huge informal sector that is to be found in most of the labour markets in the Southern hemisphere. In a number of Latin-American countries the percentage of formal employment is below 50 per cent. This means that not even half of the workforce in these countries has an …

This is the controversial question asked by BBC Radio 4’s Richard Black in a programme broadcasted on Thursday evening. Links to radio programme available here and news feature here. In the programme, Black speaks to a number of different environmental campaigners who all describe how more traditional environmental issues like nature and species conservation have been brushed aside, mainly by government authorities, in the race …

On August 20, 2009 the Washington Post reported that the US administration was making progress in resettling detainees from Guantanamo Bay.
According to the article, six European Union countries – Britain, France, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain – have agreed to receive the inmates. Four EU countries have privately told the US administration that they are committed to resettling detainees, and five other EU nations are …

International Law Observer would like to welcome Anna Dolidze, JSD candidate at Cornell Law School and human rights lawyer, as a guest author. Anna will be giving a response to a recent article in the Washington Post on a possible transfer of Guantanamo prisoners to Georgia.
Anna has been advising international organizations, including the OSCE, the UN Development Program, the Russian Justice Initiative and Human Rights …

25/08/2009 – 3:06 pm
| Comments Off on Call for Submissions from the Journal of International Law and International Relations

Below is a call for submissions from the relatively young University of Toronto’s Journal ofInternational Law and International Relations (JILIR), a student-run, peer-reviewed scholarly journal that seeks to develop interdisciplinarydiscourse at the nexus of IR and IL. Thanks to the Editors-In-Chief, Aaron Kreaden and Dan Moore, for drawing our attention to this.

On August 24, 1939, i.e. 70 years ago, the Soviet foreign minister Molotov and the foreign minister of the German Reich von Ribbentrop signed the Treaty of Non-Aggression Between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, better known as the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact or simply Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
Although the Pact was in form a non-aggression pact between two ideological enemies it committed the signatory powers …

24/08/2009 – 2:38 pm
| Comments Off on Backer on business and human rights

Professor Larry Catá Backer has recently published in Melbourne Journal of International Law an excellent case note on two recent cases decided by UK National Contact Point under the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. Here is the title and abstract:
Rights and Accountability in Development (‘Raid’) v Das Air and Global Witness v. Afrimex – Small steps towards an autonomous transnational legal system for the regulation …

19/08/2009 – 7:09 am
| Comments Off on 1000th article of the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law

As some of our readers might have noticed already (perhaps thanks to our earlier note on the subject) the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law is up and running on the web. The online edition is continuously extended and with the next upload of new articles, which will take place in September, the 1000th article will be published. For all those who have not …

On 12 August 2009, just a few days back, was the 60th anniversary of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which presently constitute the foundational codifications of the legal regime of the laws of war or international humanitarian law (IHL). The symbolic value of these fundamental legal instruments of international humanitarian law, and general public international law as a whole, cannot be overestimated. Therefore, it is with …

10/08/2009 – 5:40 pm
| Comments Off on Has Right to Self-determination Democratic Origin?

The general reading on self-determination is unclear or perhaps silent on the issue whether right to self-determination has democratic pedigree. Nonetheless this principle has been treated explicitly or tacitly by international scholarship having democratic claim. Reviewing self-determination from historical perspective makes it clear that this sixteenth century principle emerged as a ‘revolutionary nationalist’ concept for creation of State and was linked closely with ‘popular sovereignty’. …

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